'Those who love wisdom' might be a Hebrew translation of
'philosopher,' and possibly the Jewish teachers of wisdom were
influenced by Greece, but their conception of wisdom has a deeper
source than the Greek had, and what they meant by loving it was a
widely different attitude of mind and heart from that of the Greek
philosopher. It could never be said of the disciples of a Plato that
their quest was sure to end in finding what they sought. Many a man
then, and many a man since, and many a man to-day, has 'followed
knowledge, like a sinking star,' and has only caught a glimmer of a
far-off and dubious light. There is only one search which is certain
always to find what it seeks, and that is the search which knows where
the object of it is, and seeks not as for something the locality of
which is unknown, but as for that which the place of which is certain.
The manifold voices of human aims cry, 'Who will show us any good?'
The seeker who is sure to find is he who prays, 'Lord, lift Thou up
the light of Thy countenance upon us.' The heart that truly and
supremely affects God is never condemned to seek in vain. The Wisdom
of this book herself is presented as proclaiming, 'They that seek me
earnestly shall find me,' and humble souls in every age since then
have set to their seal that the word is true to their experience. For
there are two seekers in every such case, God and man. 'The Father
seeketh such to worship Him,' and His love goes through the world,
yearning and searching for hearts that will turn to Him. The shepherd
seeks for the lost sheep, and lays it on his shoulders to bear it back
to the fold. Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the seeking love of
God. And the human seeker finds God, or rather is found by God, for no
aspiration after Him is vain, no longing unresponded to, no effort to
find Him unresponded to. We have as much of God as we wish, as much as
our desires have fitted us to receive. The all-penetrating atmosphere
enters every chink open to it, and no seeking soul has ever had to
say, 'I sought Him but found Him not.'
Is there any other quest of which the same can be said? Are not all
paths of human effort strewed with the skeletons of men who have
fretted and toiled away their lives in vain attempts to grasp aims
that have eluded their grip? Do we not all know the sickness of
disappointed effort, or the sadder sickness of successful effort,
which has secured the apparent good and found it not so good after
all? The Christian life is, amid all the failures of human effort, the
only life in which the seeking after good is but a little less blessed
than the finding of it is, and in which it is always true that 'he
that seeketh findeth.' Nor does such finding deaden the spirit of
seeking, for in every finding there is a fresh discovery of new depths
in God, and a consequent quickening of desire to press further into
the abyss of His Being, so that aspiration and fruition ever beget
each other, and the upward, Godward progress of the soul is eternal.